Alexandria's Lost Tapes
by can08writer
Summary: When the interview tapes for Rick and Carl are found, Michonne takes the opportunity to show Judith and RJ what their dad and brother looked like.


Michonne sat down on the couch in her home to join her children, who were getting comfortable with their snacks and blankets on their laps. They absolutely loved movie night, and since there were only 5 children friendly DVDs in all of Alexandria they'd seen them all. But that didn't stop them from getting excited about watching Toy Story or The Lion King for the 4th and 8th time respectively.

After Judith tucked her blanket under her socked feet to keep them warm, and RJ shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth, the kids looked at their mother expectantly.

"I have a surprise for you," Michonne said, her voice sounding oddly serious. The children watched her perplexed.

"Aaron found some videos that you should see. That you deserve to see. Videos of Carl and your dad."

Judith sucked in a deep breath, and RJ's mouth fell open.

"Videos of my dad?", the boy asked.

"And Carl?" Judith chimed in.

"Yep. And you're in them too," Michonne confirmed, "but you're a little baby of course."

"Are you in it too?" RJ asked his mom.

"I am. When we first got here, the leader of Alexandria, Deanna, she interviewed and videotaped us all. Even Uncle Daryl, and Aunt Carol, Aunt Maggie, and Hershel's daddy, Glenn."

"I wanna see my daddy," RJ said, his eyes wide. He'd waited his whole life to see a depiction of his father's face. There were no photos. The only idea he'd had of him were the ones he'd conjured in his head, so to hear that there was video, and he'd be able to hear and see his father for the first time was nothing short of miraculous.

"C'mon mom, put it on, please?" Judith asked impatiently.

"Before you watch the videos, let me give you some context. We had just arrived at Alexandria with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We'd walked a hundred plus miles, we'd lost a few of our friends along the way, and the day before we arrived, we thought we might die of thirst on the side of the road. It was bad. We were desperate for any shred of hope, just so we could stay alive a little longer. It was so hard for us to believe that people could be living like this," Michonne said, pointing to the cushy room they were sitting in.

"We'd met people who pretended to be good people. They welcomed us into their community and then tried to eat us."

RJ's eyes widened. "Eat you?"

"Yes. That was how they survived. They tricked people into trusting them and then ate them. They were bad people, but that was one of the reasons why we didn't trust _this_ community. I… I was the one that convinced your dad to give this place a chance. He didn't trust Aaron when he found us, but I did. I could see that he wasn't a bad person like the other people we'd met were. Your dad agreed to come here, but he was still on alert."

Michonne watched Judith. "We wanted to make sure that this place was safe for you. Your dad didn't even want to enter the gates with you, just in case things went bad. He was stubborn, just like _you_ are RJ," Michonne said, turning to her son.

RJ smiled. "I want to see him."

Michonne beamed and stood, then walked over to the tv and slid in the video. She stood in front of the tv as she waited for the recording to start. She'd watched the video of Rick and Carl's interviews when Aaron first told her he'd found the old tapes. She'd had her time to sob in private, out of both joy and sorrow, at seeing Rick and Carl's faces. But knowing that her children were about to see their father and brother for the first time in recent memory made more tears come to her eyes. When the static that marked the beginning of the recording came on, she plopped on the sofa next to her children.

A tan chair with intricate blue designs appeared on the screen, backed by a bookcase.

"How long have you been out there?" a woman's voice asked.

"Since the beginning," a man's deep southern drawl responded.

Legs clad in faded black jeans walked in front of the camera. A gun belt was attached to the hips of the man in front of them, with a red handled machete on one side, and Judith's colt python on the other.

Judith's heart began to race wildly when she saw her gun strapped to the waist of someone else. Michonne glanced over to see her children staring at the tv without blinking.

"How did you all find each other? Did you know each other before or...?"

The man interrupted the woman as he sat down enough that his face was visible to the camera. He didn't look at the camera yet, his eyes wandering around the unfamiliar room, searching for threats. He looked intense. Wild. Untrusting. His bunched muscles made it clear he was ready to jump to his feet at a moment's notice.

"We didn't know each other before."

"I was a congressperson, Ohio, 15th district. You?"

"I don't think it matters anymore."

"Oh, I know it does," the woman insisted.

He finally looked up, his piercing blue eyes a contrast against his dirty face, overgrown with hair and glistening with sweat, and frown lines. He clasped his dirty hands and stared at the interviewer, and in doing so stared into the camera, so that his children could have a clear view of his face.

Judith gasped and said softly, "I remember him."

RJ was just staring, listening intently to every word spoken between the two.

Deanna's voice was calm and collected, a stark contrast to Rick's anxious and fidgety behavior.

"What is this place?" Rick asked, shaking his head.

"This is the start of sustainability. That's what the brochures we found say. This was a planned community, with its own solar grid, cisterns, eco-based sewage filtration, starting in the low 800,000's if there is such a thing. And they sold them all."

"How'd you end up here?"

Judith stared at her father as he listened to the woman's explanation. His voice was jolting. She remembered that voice singing to her before she fell asleep. She remembered that voice reading her stories and laughing with her. Over the years she'd forgotten it, but once she heard it again, she recalled moments with her father. He looked different in the video from how she remembered him, but his voice was the same.

RJ stared at the screen, unable to look away. This wild man was his father, the man he'd wondered about his entire life. The man who he'd heard his mother and sister talk about. The man who other people would talk about fondly. He was muscular and strong. His eyes looked haunted like he'd seen so much. They were cold, calculating.

"You've been behind these walls this entire time?" he asked, turning his head to the right and blinking rapidly. RJ chuckled at that expression, he'd seen his mom and even Judith do it when they were skeptical about someone or something. He thought his sister had learned it from his mom, but now he saw that his dad did it as well.

"We need people who've lived out there. Your group is the first we've even considered taking in in a long time."

You should keep your gates closed."

"Why?" Deanna asked in a whisper.

"Because it's all about survival now at any cost. People out there are always looking for an angle. Looking to play on your weakness. They measure you by what they can take from you. By how they can use you to live. So, bringing people into a place like this now?" Rick asked, tilting his head and scrunching up one side of his face to show his skepticism.

"Are you telling me not to bring your people in? Or are you already looking after this place? Aaron says I can trust you."

"Aaron doesn't know me, I've killed people."

Judith and RJ both gasped at that admission. Judith was old enough to realize that her father must've killed many people on the way to Alexandria from Georgia, but RJ was shocked by his father's words, and the nonchalant way that he said it. Was his dad a bad guy?

"I don't know how many by now but I know why they're all dead. They're dead so my family, all those people out there, can be alive. And so I can be alive for them."

"Sounds like I wanna be part of your family."

He stared at Deanna longer, considering her words. He listened as she continued to speak, weighing her words carefully.

"What do you want from us?" He asked as he stood to look out of her window.

"These families should be able to raise their children in a safe environment. Your son, your daughter, should have a place to grow up. What do I want? I want you to help us survive. I know you can help us do that."

"How?"

"I am exceptionally good at reading people. If I didn't win re-election I was gonna become a professional poker player."

Rick let out a small chuckle.

"I'm not kidding," the woman said, squaring up with Rick in almost an intimidating way.

"Rick, it's 3:37 PM. you're skeptical, you have a right to be, but it's time to decide. If you're the one doing the deciding."

Rick slowly reached down and turned the screw on his watch, adjusting the time.

"I was a sheriff," he said, not looking into her eyes.

"Yea, I knew it was something like that" she said. He looked up, wondering how she could've possibly known.

"If you follow our rules, you can stay here. We'll give you a house to live in for the night. Food, supplies, and you'll be allowed to explore our town and see if you'd like to stay. But one of the conditions is you'll have to turn in your weapons. They're still yours, whenever you want them you can check them out at the armory on your way out the gates, but while you're in here with us, you can't have them."

Rick looked into Deanna's eyes, still scanning them. He then gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Deanna's smile widened, and she nodded too. "Good," she exclaimed. She proceeded to the camera and clicked it off. The tv screen went black.

Judith and RJ continued to stare at the screen, still unaware that the conversation was over. After a few seconds they snapped out of their stare.

"Wow," RJ said.

"Does he look like how you remember?" Michonne asked Judith, running her hand through her daughter's brown hair.

"Um, not really," Judith said. "I remember him with grey hair, and a white beard. There, his hair was really brown."

Michonne laughed. "Yea, his hair was much browner back then."

"And I remember him being much nicer too," Judith said.

"Yea, he was really grumpy," RJ chimed in.

"He was a nice man," Michonne replied, defending her love. "But like I said, he didn't trust the people here, at least not right away. The bad people that we met on the road acted like they were nice at first, but it was to cover their bad intentions, so it was hard to trust new people when we met them. Even to this day we don't automatically trust people that come to the gates."

Michonne looked down at RJ who seemed to have forgotten the popcorn that was still resting in his lap, a rare occasion for a boy that loved food.

"Honey how do you feel, seeing your daddy for the first time?"

RJ tilted his head, just like he'd seen Rick do in the video. He took a few seconds to think.

"It was cool. I want to watch it again."

"Yea, of course you can," Michonne said. She'd watched it five times in a row when she'd first gotten the video. "But there's another video I think you'd like to see. This one is with Carl and Judith."

Judith's face lit up. "Okay, put it in mom!". Both children began to squirm in anticipation at seeing their older brother, as well as Judith as a baby.

Michonne chuckled and started the second video. As she worked, she spoke to the kids.

"This one was Carl's interview with Deanna when we first got here."

As soon as the video clicked on, Judith let out a yelp at the view of a baby her, sitting on Carl's lap. "That's me! Oh my gosh, I was so cute!"

"You were," Michonne agreed with a smile at the image of her daughter as an infant, "you were really adorable."

"And fat," RJ added playfully.

"Don't get me started on _you_ as a baby," Judith said as a warning.

The siblings' eyes scanned the face of their older brother, who RJ had never seen, and Judith barely remembered.

"That's your hat!" RJ pointed out to Judith. The two of them watched as Carl sat in the same chair from Rick's interview, with Judith happily squirming in his lap.

"This is the kinda place my mom wanted for us," Carl said, steadying Judith and looking down at her.

"I'm sorry you lost her," Deanna's voice said. Carl looked at the ground and shook his head as he pondered Deanna's words. Simultaneously, Judith looked up, almost smiling into the camera.

"I didn't just lose her, I killed her. Had to be me. When we were out there, we did what we had to do to survive. It was hard but… but that's what we do… for each other."

Baby Judith gurgled, and Carl lifted her up higher, holding her against his chest.

Judith could sense how much her brother loved her by how he cared for her in the video, and how kind he was to her. RJ looked at his brother in awe. He'd grown up hearing so many stories about Carl Grimes, about how he saved all of Alexandria before he died. How he'd defied Negan, and fought right alongside his father, and watching him on video made RJ admire how brave his brother really was.

"What kind of things did you have to do?" Deanna asked.

"Whatever it took."

"Do you want to be here, Carl?"

He shrugged his shoulders and looked down at Judith who was cooing happily with her fist in her mouth.

"I want my sister to feel safe. We're never safe in this world, not really, but I want her to feel safe for as long as she can."

"And what about you?"

He shrugged again and looked up at Deanna.

"As long as I don't let my guard down, I'm safe."

"That must be hard," Deanna said, her voice softening slightly, "keeping your guard up all the time."

"That's how it is now," Carl said.

The video went black again.

RJ and Judith once again stared at the tv, but there was no more to see.

When RJ looked up at his mother, she had tears flowing from her eyes, which she was attempting to quickly wipe away. Seeing how distressed she was, RJ got up and hugged her.

Michonne held her son tight, pressing her to him, but the feel of her son in her arms made the tears come faster and more forcefully. She let out a sob. Judith got up and joined the hug, resting her head on her mother's neck.

"I'm… I'm sorry..." Michonne tried to apologize, but she couldn't finish her sentence.

"It's okay mommy," RJ said calmly, rubbing her back. "You miss them, right?"

She nodded, trying to calm herself.

Her two children held her until she let go of them, and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her shirt. She regained control of her emotions and then held her children's hands.

"I am so grateful that you got to see your daddy and your brother. They were both great men. They were kind, and selfless, and they just wanted everyone to be happy and safe."

Michonne placed her palm on Judith's cheek and smiled at her.

"They both loved you so much, Judith. And everything that your dad did was for you. He would be so proud of you. And Carl, he gave you his hat so that you would feel as safe as he did when his dad was with him. He said his hat made him feel as strong as his dad, and he wanted you to feel like that too."

"I remember," Judith said, scrunching up her face. "I remember being in a dark place, and Carl was sad. I remember him telling me to be good, and saying that his hat was mine."

Judith smiled, and her face lit up. "I thought I was forgetting their voices, but now that I've heard them, I remember. I remember Carl playing tag with me, and when we used to look up at the stars. And I remember daddy reading to me, and playing swords."

Michonne smiled. "They used to do all those things," she confirmed. She then turned to RJ.

"And your daddy would've wanted to meet you so badly," Michonne said, caressing her son's cheek. "He was the one that asked for us to have another baby. He would've been so excited to see you, and so happy to know how strong and smart and kind you are."

"Am I like Carl?" RJ asked.

"Yea, you are," Michonne said. "Carl would've been so proud to meet his little brother."

RJ looked towards the tv again. "Mommy, can we watch it over please? I wanna see my daddy again."

Michonne smiled. "Of course we can, baby."

As she pushed Rick's interview back into the player, she knew her children had found their new favorite videos.


End file.
